On May 17, 1673, in very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, with five white _voyageurs_ and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indian corn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracing the course of the great river. Their only guide was a crude map based on scraps of information which they had gathered. Besides Marquette's journal, by a happy chance we have that of Jonathan Carver, who traveled over the same route nearly a hundred years later. From him we get much useful and interesting information. At the first, the explorers' course lay westward, along the northern shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-rice Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173} who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across Lake Winnebago. At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate a portage, or "carry." Our voyagers do not mention having any trouble here. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R. G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growing fur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living here made a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping the empty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by taking toll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent a certain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with a large party of _voyageurs_ and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised the natives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds. At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes. He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach, awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain of bullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun mowed down the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it is said. On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This brought them into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerful tribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West. A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request for guides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous and blind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they would have had great difficulty in making their way unaided.[2]